


Az a yor ahf mir

by taenia



Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Holocaust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-06
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 14:17:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1747625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taenia/pseuds/taenia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An exploration of Magneto's names, and how he came by them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Az a yor ahf mir

**Author's Note:**

> This was INCREDIBLY difficult for me to write, on account of its particular subject matter, which touches my own family history rather closely, and I'm not really up for editing it right now. So, please forgive its sloppiness.

When he saw his mother dragged from him, his rage gave way to perfect calm. He remembers the sudden certainty that he _could_ get anything he wanted, if only he knew how.

***

When he wakes, he is in a clean room, permeated with the overwhelming smells of steel and soap.

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

Apple-red cheeks and crisp, starched clothing hover anxiously around his head (which feels muddled and overwarm). The nurse’s accent is strange. He thinks that she might be Austrian, but it is hard to tell. (At any rate, she is not from Berlin.)

“My goodness, I can’t imagine how they found you in that _awful_ place. But the important thing is that you’re _home_.”

This seems unlikely. He wonders if this is yet another of the hundred thousand tortures that the Germans have devised – a new patch for his clothing, a section of the city where he cannot walk, new words he cannot say.

(He is fairly certain that _home_ is already on that list.)

“Now you will forgive me, Erik, but I need to let the colonel know that you are awake. He’s been informing your parents that we found you.”

 _Erik_?

He settles back onto the bed (brass). It is surprisingly comfortable – starched white sheets, and a feather pillow. He thinks that his mother should have something so nice – but then that would just be one more thing for them to take away. The smell of steel is all around him, an old friend.

He has just given himself over to the task of cataloging every single metal object in the room (two hypodermic needles, a surgical saw, ten brass beds, a light socket, copper wires in the wall…) when a very large man enters.

The man sets his teeth on edge. He wears brass and silver, and he carries entirely too much money.

“Ah, good, Erik! You are awake!” Then the man furrows his brow. “Do you remember your own name? Or should I call you Max?”

The boy swallows hard. He does not want to make this man angry – he feels like arsenic bound into copper, brittle and poisonous.

“You may call me what you wish, sir,” he says. “But my name is Max. Max Eisenhardt, sir.”

“Ah yes.” The man’s brow furrows. “Well, I don’t quite know how to tell you this – I am a military man, not a nursemaid, you understand? But you are a grown boy, and I think you can appreciate the facts, just as they are. You are not Max Eisenhardt.”

The boy stutters in shock, before simply saying. “I … do not think you are correct. How can that be, sir?”

“Ah, yes. Well, we have not completed our investigation yet, you understand? We only discovered you yesterday, after all.” There is a false heartiness to his voice that the boy ardently distrusts. “But as far as we can tell, you were kidnapped as a child – when you were only two years old – by the criminal Jakob Eisenhardt.”

This is too much. The boy can only gape, while the man continues.

“The ability that you showed at the prison camp gate clearly shows that you are no Jew.” He spits the last word as though it were a curse, then takes a dramatic pause before continuing. “No. We … have had a special program. Other people with … special gifts have, for some time now, been engaged in a program to improve the race. When Herr Lehnsherr’s child was kidnapped, it was a _great_ blow to us, you understand?”

The boy finds that he is unable to speak. The idea that he might not be a Jew is, in some ways, strangely welcome. He can go home, to Berlin, to his old friends, to his old life.

But the idea that he might be _one of them_.

He cannot think of it.

Later, they bring in his new family. Smiling, pale-haired and freckled, they look nothing like him. His dark complexion and curls are dismissed as the result of his gift – _too much iron in your blood_ – what a joke.

As long as he does what they ask, everyone is kind.

 _Tell me what kind of coin I am holding_ , they say, and so he does, and he remembers the money that was taken from Jakob Eisenhardt’s till,on that night of terror, so long ago.

 _Tell me what kind of fillings I have in my teeth_ , they say, and he shudders, remembering his mother’s new gold fillings. She was so proud of them, too.

 _Tell me what time it is_ , they say, and he remembers the precise time tables for the trains that they had to board, and the fear of sixty people, all huddled together in the reek, and then he reads the little steel hands of their stolen pocket watches.

 _Move this coin_ , they say, and he cannot, no matter how hard he tries.

He tries to be angry with them, to do what they want, but it is _never_ enough. He cannot focus his rage into anything but pain. Clarity eludes him.

And so they send him to Doctor Schmidt, the expert who can unlock little Erik’s gift, by destroying the one thing Max had left.

Even when he knows that it was all a lie, when his mitochondrial genes, at last, sing forth that he is an Eisenhardt (née Cassel), he cannot go back to being Max. The hydra has devoured too much.

But he can be Magneto.


End file.
